Ineffability through Modularity: Gaps in the French Clitic Cluster*

MORPHOPHONOLOGY is here a cover-term for the systems responsible fo r the form and arrangement of morphemes not due to syntax and inte rpre ation. Its purview varies with the theory, but the allomorphy of the English past in d stribut-ed, let, ran, though-t, went clearly belongs here, and even in an exuberant syntax, so d oes the morpheme-internal prosody-sensitive infixation in Du(-fuckin-)br(*-fuckin-)óvnik (McCarthy 1982: 575). Under SYNTAX are included both syntax and aspects of interpretation dependent on it, such as theta and binding theory. MFS is a hypothesis about the MODULAR ARCHITECTURE of the cognitive system containing these domains: syntax is encapsulated from morphophonolog ical information and the mechanisms that manipulate it. MFS seem to be as pervasively and sy stematically right as befits a fundamental architecture principle, whether or not it has excep tions that call for limited morphophonology-tosyntax communication. Syncretisms are a token: in F rench (2), nonstrong, nonnominative plural pronouns neutralize gender across paradigms, as for les, yet this fails to influence their gender for participle and pronoun agreement in the syntax, mises and elles.

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